Children subjected to multiple “indescribably awful” sex crimes were labelled
by care professionals as “very difficult girls making bad choices”, a
report finds today.
The review of agencies’ involvement with six Oxford girls who fell victim to a
brutal group of organised adult abusers reveals a culture in which, for
years, police and care workers with little knowledge of child sexual
exploitation failed entirely to grasp the psychology of the grooming
process.
They invariably blamed vulnerable children as young as 11 for placing
themselves at risk, or their families for failing to protect them, instead
of focusing on the men who steadily eroded their victims’ ability to consent
to sex “by a process of grooming escalating to violent control”.
The
serious case review was ordered in 2013 after seven men, five of
Pakistani origin and two African brothers, were convicted at the Old Bailey
of 59 sex crimes against the girls over a seven-year period.
So violently horrific were many of the offences, including multiple rapes,
that five of the offenders became the first in Britain to receive life
sentences for child exploitation crimes.
Today’s report suggests that as many as 370 girls in Oxfordshire may have
fallen victim to similar group offending over the past 15 years.
It finds no evidence of wilful professional neglect or misconduct but reveals
that “scores of professionals from numerous disciplines” used language

The mother of a teenage boy fatally stabbed in the chest by a gang of bike
thieves has made an emotional plea for justice after Scotland Yard released
“truly shocking” CCTV footage of the attack.
Michelle Watson, 39, paid tribute to her son Alan Cartwright, 15, who
collapsed and died in the street after being attacked as he cycled along.
“He always made you laugh about anything and everything. He was just the funny
one out of his friends,” said Mrs Watson, fighting back tears.
“I feel angry, I want somebody found for this. I just feel numb.
“Looking at the CCTV footage it looks like he got punched, like somebody had
just hit him.
“It was so quick, he just carried on riding and two minutes up the road he is
collapsed and dead. It’s like it’s not real.
“I would say to witnesses, if you’ve got any sort of conscien

A “lethal mix” of denial and failure at almost every level of the NHS led to
the needless deaths of 11 babies and one mother at a dysfunctional hospital, a
“damning” review has found.
Staff at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS trust “distorted the
truth” about poor care and suppressed a critical report in the pursuit of a
clean bill of health from NHS regulators, an inquiry concluded today.
A national review into the safety of maternity services across the country is
expected to be launched after the Morecambe Bay inquiry laid bare
“inexcusable” failures of honesty and competence that could be repeated
elsewhere without urgent action.
In a report with clear echoes of the Mid Staffordshire scandal, the inquiry
found that at least nine opportunities to halt the deaths were missed over a
decade as bosses rejected the concerns of families and c